Pumpkin Garden Game

Photo credits: LILY/NTU

The Pumpkin Garden Game was developed jointly by the NTU-UBC Research Center of Excellence in Active Living for the Elderly (LILY). Pumpkin Garden Game acts as a platform that can collect big data about a user’s personal wellness unobtrusively in a fun, game-like environment. It is a social game with a farming theme, played on the iPad platform. The game’s activities are designed with strong grounding in medical research in order to provide ample opportunities for users to assess a person’s risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.

This is done through analyzing motor functions of the user, such as hand movement synchronization and micrographia. It also analyses the cognitive function of the user by looking at factors such as short-term memory as well as looking out for any impulsive or compulsive behaviours.

Funded by the National Research Foundation under the IDM Futures Funding Initiative, the game has been launched for user testing with the Pacific Parkinson’s Research Centre in Canada, and developers are in discussions with Apple Research Kit to deploy the game to the Research Kit framework.